Decadent angel of Downton: The sexual adventuress, extravagant hostess who blew her inheritance, turning her stately home into a war hospital

At barely 5ft, Almina, the 5th Countess Carnarvon was described as a 'Pocket Venus'

To the young men who lay in their hospital beds, badly wounded, burned and traumatised by the horror of the trenches, she appeared almost like an angel.

Dressed in nurse’s whites, petite and strikingly beautiful, Almina tenderly cared for the Army officers and pilots, solicitously smoothing their bed covers, cleaning and dressing their wounds, and giving orders to the nurses under her command.

But this was no ordinary military hospital — and she was no ordinary matron. In fact, she had no medical training at all.

But Almina, the Countess of Carnarvon and chatelaine of Highclere Castle in Hampshire, was not one to be deflected by such details...

When Downton Abbey returns to ITV1 next month, its 11 million viewers will see Highclere, the house where the series is set, transformed from a sumptuous stately home into a military hospital.

The action is set in 1916 and the fictional Earl and Countess of Grantham have opened their doors to convalescing soldiers injured in the trenches of World War I.

Pictures released from the series show uniformed officers recuperating in the grounds of Downton Abbey, just as they did a century ago at Highclere, still the home of the current Lord Carnarvon and his family.

There is, of course, the obvious assumption that the TV drama will, at least in part, mirror the real-life occurrences at Highclere.

But even Oscar-winning scriptwriter Julian Fellowes would be hard-pressed to surpass the familial intrigues and suppressed scandals of the Carnarvons, the castle’s actual inhabitants, at the time that the new series is set.

At the heart of these events was the beautiful, charismatic — but mercurial — Almina, whose immense wealth subsidised the castle’s upkeep. It had been her idea to turn Highclere into a wartime hospital, but sadly Almina’s extravagance was ultimately to be her undoing.

Even Almina’s parentage is a source of controversy. When she was born in London in 1876, her French mother, Marie, was already separated from her husband, Frederick Wombwell.

Almina was thought to have been born as a result of her mother’s liaison with Alfred de Rothschild — of the Rothschild banking dynasty and one of the richest men in the world.

When Downton Abbey returns, viewers will see Highclere, the house where the series is set, transformed from a sumptuous stately home into a military hospital

However, William Cross, author of The Life And Secrets Of Almina Carnarvon, believes that she could equally have been fathered by another of the wayward Marie’s lovers.

Besides, there are suggestions that de Rothschild was homosexual — although this would not, of course, have precluded him from parenthood.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Rothschild took a fatherly interest in Almina throughout his life.

Thanks to his financial support, when Almina was presented at court in 1893 aged 17, it was not only her beauty — at barely 5ft she was described as a ‘Pocket Venus’ — but her wealth that made her an attractive proposition to aristocratic young men looking to prop up their family fortunes by marrying into money.

In Downton Abbey, the Earl of Grantham had married the American heiress Cora so that her millions would subsidise Downton’s upkeep, but their marriage appears happy and passionate. The same could not be said for Almina’s.

Share this article

George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, may have had the upkeep of Highclere in mind when he proposed to Almina Wombwell — or he might have been more concerned with paying off his debts.

An early globe-trotter, he sailed to the West Indies on a 340ft yacht and also visited Australia, South America, Japan and Cairo.

He was often in the company of his Eton schoolfriend Victor Duleep Singh, an Indian prince and notorious playboy. Together they frequented the fleshpots and gambling dens of Hong Kong, Paris and Cairo.

By the time he met Almina at a state ball at Buckingham Palace, his playboy lifestyle, coupled with childhood illness, had taken their toll. Tall and gaunt, his face sunken and pockmarked, George, now the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, was the very image of a dissolute aristocrat.

Alfred de Rothschild, however, was keen for Almina to marry into the peerage and agreed to pay off the Earl’s gambling debts (amounting to the then vast sum of £150,000) in return for her hand.

George struck a hard bargain, demanding a sizeable dowry in addition. It was, in his son the 6th Earl’s view, no more than a marriage of convenience, a means — as one social commentator put it — ‘to induce solvency’.

Almina married George Rothschild in June 1895 when she was 18

Rothschild eventually agreed to a dowry of £500,000 — around £50 million in today’s currency — with yearly payments of £12,000.

The unlikely pair were married in June 1895, with a lavish society wedding. The 29-year-old Earl towered above his 18-year-old bride.

On their return from honeymoon, Almina began spending the Rothschild millions on refurbishing Highclere’s stately rooms, covering the walls with bolts of turquoise silk and throwing lavish impromptu parties for up to 500 guests.

Bertie, the Prince of Wales, came for a weekend’s shooting in 1895: the Highclere accounts show that Almina spent £3,497 (about £360,000 in today’s currency) on the finest chefs, wine and flowers to keep his Royal Highness happy.

The Earl indulged his love of horse-racing, buying horses and founding a stud at Highclere. The Highclere connection with racing endured for many years: his grandson, the 7th Earl, became our present Queen’s racing manager and one of her closest friends.

While Almina threw herself into entertaining, her husband soon discovered another passion: motoring. His reckless, high-speed driving quickly earned him the nickname ‘Motor Carnarvon’ — and a number of court appearances.

In 1901, the Earl was racing in Germany when his car overturned, pinning him beneath it and shattering his jaw and puncturing his lungs.The Earl returned to Highclere where Almina nursed him back to health and, that same year, their daughter, Lady Evelyn, was born. Almina had already given her husband an heir, Henry, born in 1898, who would go on to become the 6th Earl.

Now a semi-invalid, unable to walk except with a stick, and suffering debilitating migraines, the Earl channelled his energies into other areas. He became a keen supporter of aviation — the aeroplane pioneer Geoffrey de Havilland made his first successful flight on the Highclere estate in 1910 — and established a golf course in the grounds.

Meanwhile, Almina was becoming increasingly frustrated with her role as society hostess and dutiful wife.

She confided to a friend decades later that her husband behaved coldly towards her and appeared even to be repulsed by her.

Hurt and frustrated, Almina took a lover. In true Lady Chatterley style, he was one of the Highclere gardeners — and Almina would signal to him when the coast was clear for a tryst. According to William Cross, Almina had a healthy sexual appetite, and he was not her only lover.

Fiona, the current Lady Carnarvon, who is shortly to publish her own biography of Almina, believes that although the marriage was successful and enduring, ‘it’s quite possible she may have strayed’. On the other hand, Almina was prone to romanticising the truth.

Even Downton Abbey's scriptwriter Julian Fellowes would be hard-pressed to surpass the familial intrigues and suppressed scandals of the Carnarvons

There is certainly no evidence of infidelity on the Earl’s part, although he maintained a voyeuristic interest in women, and amassed a large collection of photographs of naked and semi-naked girls (his loyal valet destroyed the nude pictures after the Earl’s death).

As a result of his poor health, the Earl was advised to spend the winter in warmer climes. He chose Egypt, and Almina accompanied him.

He soon became interested in Egyptology, the study of ancient Egypt through artefacts. It was to bring him fame, recognition and — ultimately — death. He would sally forth into the desert and, seated on a chair in a large screened cage as protection from the flies, supervise his workforce of up to 275 men.

Almina would sometimes join him, dressed incongruously in high-heeled shoes and festooned in jewellery, as if she were going to a garden party.

At first a mummified cat was all the Earl had to show for his pains, but in 1907 he teamed up with a young archaeologist named Howard Carter and began financing his excavations. The two uncovered a number of remarkable finds, including hidden temples in the desert, before World War I forced them to abandon their work and return home.

While the Earl chafed in frustration, Almina was thrilled to return to Highclere. Like many chatelaines of stately homes, she decided to ‘do her bit’ by transforming the family seat into a military hospital. But Almina did it in style.

She recruited a team of pretty young nurses, dressed them in fuchsia uniforms and encouraged them to wear make-up, believing that this would boost her patients’ morale — and speed their recovery.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, her patients agreed. After the hell of the trenches, Highclere appeared, as one described it, a ‘veritable paradise.’

She may have been compassionate, but Almina was no egalitarian: only well-connected officers, especially Irish ones (she had a soft spot for the Irish), were welcome, not ordinary soldiers.

The only person who did not appreciate her work was her husband. He considered the whole scheme ‘quite mad’, and was irritated to find his 200-room castle steadily being taken over: sumptuous salons became casualty wards, bedrooms were transformed into operating theatres, patients recuperated beneath Gainsborough and Van Dyck paintings, while nurses pushed patients in wheelchairs around grounds designed by Capability Brown.

With rising casualty levels, Almina relocated the hospital to a large house leased in Bryanston Square, London, to be nearer specialist doctors. War appeared to give her the fulfilment she craved.

And yet Almina’s generosity was soon to prove her undoing: by 1918 her extravagant outlay — the patients at her London hospital were waited on by butlers and footmen — had brought her to the edge of financial collapse. It was only the death in the same year of Alfred de Rothschild, who left her a huge legacy, that saved Almina from bankruptcy.

With the end of the war the Earl returned to Egypt. In 1922 his endeavours at last bore fruit when he, Carter and the Carnarvons’ spirited daughter Lady Evelyn together uncovered the 3,500-year-old treasure-filled tomb of Tutankhamun, the fabled boy king of Ancient Egypt. It was a sensational discovery and Carnarvon and Carter became world-famous.

But the Earl did not have long to bask in his glory. In March the following year he was bitten by a mosquito and subsequently grew gravely ill from blood poisoning — developing pneumonia.

On hearing the news, Almina hired a biplane from de Havilland and, together with the best surgeon she could find, flew to Egypt.

But their ministrations could not save him and on April 5, 1923, the Earl died, giving rise to the rumour of the Curse of the Pharoahs. Back at Highclere, his beloved dog is said to have howled piteously at that exact moment, before dying too.

It has to be admitted that Almina did not mourn for long. In December of that same year, she married an army officer, Colonel Ian Dennistoun — another man permanently wounded by World War I — with whom she was entirely besotted.

‘Almina enjoyed looking after invalids,’ explains William Cross.

‘She loved having control over men. She was an arch-manipulator.’

She opened a series of nursing homes in London, but remained incapable of managing her finances: she considered it ‘bad taste’ to send bills to less affluent patients.

After Colonel Dennistoun died in 1938, Almina found another lover, a man 20 years younger than her, whom she kept secret from her family despite living with him for 20 years. Although she saw her daughter, Evelyn, regularly, her relationship with her son, Henry, was somewhat strained.

An inveterate womaniser, the 6th Earl was said to have cuckolded half of Berkshire and was known for corridor creeping around Highclere during house parties, ‘knocking on women’s bedroom doors with an unconventional part of his anatomy’.

As a result, on her husband’s death Almina had ensured that while her son inherited Highclere, he did not get any of the Rothschild money that kept it afloat. Instead, she continued to spend it freely. By 1951 it was exhausted — and Almina was declared bankrupt.

Such was the stigma that not only was she was shunned by the Royal Family in Ascot’s royal enclosure but her standing in society entirely crumbled. Almina was devastated.

And so it was that, at the end of her life, the Countess of Carnarvon — who had been waited on by armies of servants in the splendour of Highclere for most of her life — was reduced to living in a modest terrace house in Bristol, abandoned by all but her housekeeper.

She died in 1969, aged 93, her riches to rags story complete. And yet her legacy lives on, not only in the sumptuous silk wallpaper of Highclere, but also in the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb — which might have lain undiscovered had it not been for her financial backing.

Those who were nursed back to health in her homes remained grateful to her to the end of their days.